The invention relates to a method of automatically evaluating the quality of images and image data to determine whether they merit being processed into an output product in a photographic laboratory system.
Conventional state-of-the-art photo laboratory systems offer a wide diversity of output formats to deliver image copies or image data in accordance with individual customer requests for each order. For example, pictures in the same customer order can be produced in different print formats on photographic paper, and the individual prints can in addition be differentiated between matte finish and glossy finish. In addition, so-called index prints are delivered with each customer order, which show all of the exposures on a film-developing order that meet minimum output quality standards in a numbered sequence, in some cases also including those exposures that were actually graded as failing minimum output quality standards, with information why the image was classified as a reject.
As an alternative or in addition, the images can be offered to the customer in the form of digital image data on electronic data carriers such as CD-ROMs, DVDs and the like. Furthermore, the image data of a customer order can also be transmitted through the Internet by way of data interfaces directly to the end customer, or they can be posted in a website album.
Conventional state-of-the-art methods of assessing whether images and image data are of sufficient quality to be included in the order output use a fixed accept/reject scheme based on a simple yes/no determination of whether an image meets certain quality criteria such as correct exposure light level, adequate sharpness, adequate contrast and the like, without differentiating between the different possible output forms. For cost reasons, only those images or image data that met the output quality criteria are produced at the output. Those exposures that did not make the grade for acceptable output are shown only on the index print for the customer's information.